If You Loved The Terminator, Watch These 8 Next

Same unstoppable pursuit, same metal dread, strong movie.guru scores. Seven of these are easy calls. One of them starts a fight in the comments.

Number one beats a certain 1991 sequel on paper. You will be mad.

1. 8
   Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)8.7

   A metal-armed assassin who never stops walking. Sound familiar?

   Same bones: a silent killer stalks the hero through a city and shrugs off everything. 8.7 movie.guru score. The finale is mostly flying aircraft carriers yelling at each other.
2. 7
   Serenity (2005)8.5

   The best chase movie almost nobody paid to see.

   A tiny crew runs from a polite, relentless hunter. It made $25.5M domestic, yet audiences rate it above 93% of movies. The crowd that showed up was right.
3. 6
   Iron Man (2008)9.0

   Man plus machine, minus the murder. Still counts.

   The friendly flip of the cyborg idea: a guy builds his armor in a cave. 9.0 movie.guru score, $585.8M worldwide. The final boss fight is its weakest stretch.
4. 5
   Avatar (2009)8.5

   Same Cameron, bigger mechs, thinner script.

   Military hardware, a grunt villain played by Stephen Lang, and machines that stomp. $2.92B worldwide. The plot is a hand-me-down, which is why the Guru's Take stops at 8.0.
5. 4
   X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)8.8

   The most Terminator plot a superhero movie ever borrowed.

   Machines hunt survivors in a wrecked future, so someone goes back to stop it. That's the pitch. 8.8 movie.guru score, $746M worldwide. The timeline math gives you a headache.
6. 3
   Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)8.6

   Audiences gave it a B+. They were wrong.

   One long pursuit through a dead world, the original's engine at full throttle. CinemaScore B+, Guru's Take 9.5. The plot fits on a napkin, on purpose.
7. 2
   Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)9.3

   The sequel that made the original look like a rehearsal.

   Same director, same Arnold, now the machine is the bodyguard. A+ CinemaScore, $518.9M worldwide, Guru's Take 9.6. The kid's slang has aged like milk in a hot car.
8. 1
   Aliens (1986)9.4

   Aliens beats T2. The math agrees. Fight me.

   Same director, same dread, tough soldiers outmatched by something that won't stop. Its 9.4 movie.guru score tops T2's 9.3 on an $18.5M reported budget. The slow opening is the price.

$1,084 says you comment "T2, obviously" before you finish reading the Aliens entry.

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Current mood: ready to fight about it